Stephen Rehfuss saw the goal straight ahead of him. Coming off a Hobart turnover, Ryan Simmons immediately fed the attack for a fast break. But two Hobart defenders stepped up to block Rehfuss’ path. Instead of forcing a move to try to beat both defenders, Rehfuss stepped back and waited for his offense to gather itself, except for Nate Solomon.

Solomon broke free from his defender and sprung across the crease, where Rehfuss fed him for an easy transition goal.

“Those two get things going for this offense every day,” Hobart head coach Greg Raymond said. “Their heads are always up.”

Rehfuss and Solomon led No. 8 Syracuse (6-3, 3-0 Atlantic Coast) in scoring Tuesday night en route to an 11-4 win over Hobart (4-6, 1-1 Northeastern) in the 33rd installment of the Kraus-Simmons rivalry. With five and four points, respectively, Rehfuss and Solomon led Syracuse to its third-consecutive win. What opened as a balanced, offensive outburst for SU, eventually turned into a stalemate. But Solomon’s play early on and Rehfuss’ play in crunch time separated the Orange from the Statesmen.

“It was a lot of opportunities off guys dodging and a couple were in transition,” Rehfuss said. “Just being in the right spot.”

After defeating Notre Dame on Saturday, 10-6, and having only one day of prep to plan for Hobart, Syracuse head coach John Desko figured his team would open the game sluggish and be forced to play catchup offensively. The opposite happened. After Hobart scored the first goal of the game, SU scored the next eight.

Solomon scored the first goal and Rehfuss assisted on the second to give SU a 2-1 lead. But the entire team was hot at the game’s start. Even Matt Lane, who hadn’t scored a goal since SU’s season-opener win over Binghamton on Feb. 10, found the back of the net in the first quarter on SU’s man-up attack. He tallied an assist in the fourth quarter as well.

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In the first half, the Orange dominated the corners. The offense spaced out, generating room to operate, sending cutters in front of the crease with Rehfuss facilitating behind the cage and Jamie Trimboli and Tucker Dordevic running the offense from the top of the restraining box. Nearly every time, SU found the open man.

With two minutes left in the first half, Dordevic felt a double team closing in. He tried to force his way left to no avail. He then aimed right but found the same result. Instead of trying to push his way through the defense, he drew it out. Two defenders followed him out to the 30-yard line before they realized their mistake.

Dordevic rifled a pass Trimboli’s way to his right, with Bradley Voigt waiting on the right side of the cage. As Trimboli received the ball, Voigt’s defender left him to help double Trimboli, who then quickly dished the ball to a wide-open Voigt to finish an easy one-on-one goal.

“We were more worried about Syracuse from a cutting standpoint and an ability to feed than shooting the ball on the run,” Raymond said.

That may have been a focal point, but in the first half, Hobart didn’t act like it. Syracuse went into the break up 7-1 with just two turnovers. The Orange took care of the ball and finished at the net. That changed in the third period.

After a Rehfuss goal to extend the lead to 8-1, SU fell dormant. For nearly 19 minutes, the Orange could not buy a goal, turning the ball over twice as much in the third quarter as it did during the entire first half. And Hobart began to produce. The Statesmen rattled off three goals in the third quarter to enter the fourth down 8-4.

In the first half, Brendan Curry and David Lipka each scored goals blowing by their defenders and beating Hobart goalie Sam Lucchesi. SU tried to go back to that time and time again in the third quarter with no success.

“I think we got a little bit anxious. I think guys felt that they could beat their man and wanted to get a goal right away,” Desko said. “As a result we took some bad shots.”

Then Rehfuss took over. With 8:22 left in the game, Rehfuss ditched his defender from behind the cage, curled out to the right side of Lucchesi and fired a shot, low-to-high in the top right corner of the net. Fifty-five seconds later Solomon found Rehfuss again for a goal to push the lead back to 10-4 and seal the game.

“He let me breathe a little bit at that point,” Desko said. “I was getting a little anxious waiting for that next goal or that next stop. It made me feel better at that point in the game.”

With five points on Tuesday, Rehfuss has emerged as the team’s leading scorer this season with 27 points. Aside from SU’s 15-3 loss to Albany, Rehfuss has had at least a goal and an assist in every game and has tallied five points in three different games this season.

“He runs the offense very well,” Desko said. “He knows where to be and when to be there. He shot with some precision today.”

Published on April 3, 2018 at 10:45 pm

Contact Matt: mdliberm@syr.edu